League: Bellamy rues mad minutes

They are the 26 minutes of madness and incompetence that threaten to haunt NSW coach Craig Bellamy for the remainder of his life.

As he wrestles with whether to put his hand up for a third crack at beating Queensland next season, Bellamy revealed the frustrations he would carry into tonight's final game of the 2009 Origin campaign.

Taking on a Queensland side being lauded as one of, if not the greatest, to pull on Maroon jumpers, Bellamy can't help but think what might have been.

Take out the eight-minute nightmare from game one and 18-minute encore performance in Sydney - when on each occasion the Blues gave up 18-0 leads - and NSW have outscored Queensland 32-16.

But Bellamy knows all that matters for little in the end, with the Maroons having created history with their fourth straight series win.

"It's frustrating to have those periods ... I don't think we've been that far away except for the periods where we haven't just been ordinary, we've been well below ordinary.

"There's just been a couple of periods in the game where we've gone right off the rails - that 10-minute period in Melbourne, that was a pretty young side down there and they perhaps got downhearted when Jarryd [Hayne] got that try disallowed but in Sydney, to start like that, and have a 10-15 minute period like that, that's just not on.

"I was hoping we'd learn a little bit from [game one] but we didn't.

"I hate to say it, but the second one there was a lot more softness about our defence ... we made errors but especially at this level, you've got to back errors up with strong defence and we didn't do that and that was the real disappointing part for me."

Whether the result of tonight's match will have any bearing on Bellamy's desire to return next year is unclear, with the Melbourne Storm mentor giving little away.

He believes he has handled coaching against his Storm stars Cameron Smith, Greg Inglis and Billy Slater a bit better.

And is this the last time he'll do it?

"It could be, it might not be, who knows? That's not all my decision either - the NSWRL might not want me," said Bellamy.

"I'm not thinking that [it's my last game] - if I start thinking that I'm not doing my job properly."

* State of Origin III

Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, SS2 tonight, 9.30

QUEENSLAND

Billy Slater
Darius Boyd
Greg Inglis
Justin Hodges
Willie Tonga
Darren Lockyer (c)
J. Thurston
Steve Price
Cameron Smith
Matt Scott
Ashley Harrison
Sam Thaiday
Dallas Johnson

NSW

Kurt Gidley (c)
Jarryd Hayne
Michael Jennings
Jamie Lyon
David Williams
Trent Barrett
Brett Kimmorley
Justin Poore
Michael Ennis
Josh Perry
Ben Creagh
Trent Waterhouse
A. Watmough

INTERCHANGE

Queensland: Karmichael Hunt, David Shillington, Neville Costigan, Michael Crocker. 18th man: Cooper Cronk.

New South Wales: Brett White, Craig Wing, Glenn Stewart, Tom Learoyd-Lahrs.

- AAP